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Showing 1–30 of 63 art terms

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Art Term

Abbaye de Créteil

Established in 1906, the Abbaye de Créteil was a group of French writers, artists and composers who were inspired by …

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Art Term

Abject art

Abject art is used to describe artworks which explore themes that transgress and threaten our sense of cleanliness and propriety …

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Art Term

Abstract art

Abstract art is art that does not attempt to represent an accurate depiction of a visual reality but instead uses …

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Art Term

Abstract expressionism

Abstract expressionism is the term applied to new forms of abstract art developed by American painters such as Jackson Pollock, …

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Art Term

Abstraction-Création

Abstraction-Création was an association of abstract artists set up in Paris in 1931 with the aim of promoting abstract art …

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Art Term

Académie Colarossi

The Académie Colarossi was an art school in Paris, France, established in the nineteenth century as an alternative to the …

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Art Term

Académie Julian

The Académie Julian was a major alternative school to the official Ecole des Beaux Arts, especially for women who were …

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Art Term

Academy

Established during the Renaissance and widespread by the seventeenth century, academies were artist-run organisations whose aim was to improve the …

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Art Term

Acrylic paint

Acrylic paint is water-based fast-drying paint widely used by artists since the 1960s. It can be used thickly or thinly …

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Art Term

Actionism

Actionism is the English version of the general German term for performance art, specifically used for Vienna-based group Wiener Aktionismus …

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Art Term

Action painters

The term action painters is applied to artists working from the 1940s until the early 1960s whose approach to painting …

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Art Term

Activist art

Activist art is a term used to describe art that is grounded in the act of ‘doing’ and addresses political …

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Art Term

Aesthetic movement

The aesthetic movement was a late nineteenth century movement that championed pure beauty and ‘art for art’s sake’ emphasising the …

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Art Term

Aesthetics

Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy that is concerned with the nature of beauty and taste

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Art Term

Afrapix

Afrapix was a photographers' collective and agency founded in South Africa in 1982 which encouraged its members to use photography …

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Art Term

AfriCOBRA

AfriCOBRA was a Chicago-based group of black artists whose shared aim was to develop their own aesthetic in the visual …

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Art Term

Afrofuturism

Afrofuturism is a cultural aesthetic that combines science-fiction, history and fantasy to explore the African-American experience and aims to connect …

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Art Term

Agit-prop

Agit-prop is an enterprise set up by the Soviet Communist Party in 1920 intended to control and promote the ideological …

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Art Term

Airbrushing

Airbrushing is a painting technique which uses an airbrush to give an even and consistent surface, often used to create …

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Art Term

AkhRR

The Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia (AkhRR), founded in Moscow in 1922, depicted everyday life among the working people …

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Art Term

Alabaster

Alabaster is a soft white or translucent stone, it is a fine-grained marble-like variety of gypsum

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Art Term

Albumen print

Invented in 1850, and commonly used in the late nineteenth century, the albumen print is a type of photographic print …

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Art Term

Allegory

Allegory in art is when the subject of the artwork, or the various elements that form the composition, is used …

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Art Term

Altermodern

Altermodern is a term coined by curator Nicolas Bourriaud in 2009, to describe art made as a reaction against standardisation …

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Art Term

American Abstract Artists (AAA)

American Abstract Artists (AAA) is an organisation founded in 1936 to promote the appreciation of abstract art in the United …

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Art Term

American social realist photography

American social realist photography refers to photographs that documented rural poverty during America’s Great Depression of the 1930s and 1940s

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Art Term

Analytical cubism

The term analytical cubism describes the early phase of cubism, generally considered to run from 1908–12, characterised by a fragmentary …

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Art Term

Angry Penguins

Angry Penguins was a modernist literary and artistic movement that sought to shake up the entrenched cultural establishment of Australia …

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Art Term

Animation

Animation is the rapid display of sequences of static imagery in such a way as to create the illusion of …

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Art Term

Anthropophagia

Meaning cannibalism, anthropophagia as an art term is associated with the 1960s Brazilian art movement Tropicália whose work, although being …

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